THE LADY OF BARELLAN.
It was a ride of ten miles from Birralong township to Barellan, and from
the Murray's selection another two miles had to be added. So it was
arranged that Ailleen should ride out to a certain point and wait there
for the Murrays to come (if she did not find them waiting for her), and
then the three could ride on until they met Dickson, who was to come out
to meet them.
Ailleen had her horse saddled, and was away immediately after the early
breakfast, and the schoolmaster, being in the enjoyment of the holidays,
watched her as she rode down the road and away into the bush. It was
quite possible that Nellie Murray and her brother might be already at
the trysting-place, and Ailleen rode at a full canter so as not to waste
time on the way. She had covered more than half the distance when she
heard a shout behind her, and, reining in her horse, there came to her
the sounds of another horse galloping and a man's voice calling her
name. She faced round and saw Dickson approaching her.
"Why, how did you get as far as this?" she asked as he rode up. "The
Murrays were to be by Price's Waterhole, or I was to wait for them
there, and we were to meet you later."
He looked at her with an uneasy grin on his face and a shifty look in
his watery eyes.
"I didn't think Nellie would care to come. I don't think she will, so I
rode on for you. We can go right on together," he answered.
"You didn't think?" she asked. "What did Nellie say? It was her
suggestion that----"
"Yes, I know; but--we don't want her. You come on alone. I'd rather you
did. Mother won't want to have a crowd about the place. It's only you
she wants to see," he said, interrupting her, and speaking quickly.
"And let them wait all day for me when I said I would meet them? What
next?" Ailleen exclaimed; and as there was a suspicion of ruffled temper
at his proposal, she sought her usual cure by moving her horse forwards,
as she could not move about herself.
As the horse started, Dickson brought his round in front of it.
"Here, I say," he said, "it's no good playing the fool like that. We
don't want the others. You come by yourself."
For answer Ailleen turned her horse round from him, and he strove to
keep his in front of it, but failing, he leaned forward and caught hold
of the bridle.
"I'm not going to be----" he began.
"Leave go," Ailleen exclaimed sharply, looking him full in the face
with eyes that were dangerously angry.
"I don't want, and I won't have, the others," he retorted, retaining his
hold of the bridle.
The thin switch Ailleen carried fell across the back of his hand
sufficiently hard to induce him to let go.
"If I tell Nellie what you said?" she remarked.
"I was only in fun," he answered, the uneasy grin still on his face and
his eyes shifting. "I only wanted to see if you would let them wait."
The girl looked at him steadily.
"Willy Dickson, don't tell me lies," she said severely; and he evaded
her look. "If I had not promised to meet Nellie, I'd go straight back
again."
She set her horse at a canter without waiting for him to reply, and rode
steadily on, he after her, till Price's Waterhole was reached. It was a
small lagoon surrounded by sturdy ti-trees, and with its surface almost
covered by the blooms and leaves of pink water-lilies, over which a
myriad of blue dragon-flies and other winged insects were skimming.
Under the shade of the trees two horses were standing, and on the bank
of the lagoon, watching the dragon-flies as they flashed to and fro,
Nellie and her brother were sitting.
Fashions do not change with the month in bush communities, and Nellie's
hat was one of a pair with Ailleen's--they both came out of the same lot
from Marmot's store. Mushroom was the appropriate name given to them,
for they were wide of brim and small of crown, and the brims had the
extra recommendation of being bendable, up or down, forming an excellent
frame for the long, thin veil the dust and mosquitoes sometimes made a
necessity. They might not be especially beautiful of themselves, but
many a manly Australian heart has beaten more quickly at the sight of
one, with the fresh face of a bush maiden under it. As the two girls'
hats were alike, so were their costumes. Marmot kept more brands of
tobacco than varieties of dress material, and beyond the resources of
Marmot's, the Birralong maidens knew not. But a plain grey dress has
many a charm when the wearer has a figure of native worth and a carriage
as free and graceful as that of a bush-bred girl. The likeness between
the two, however, did not extend beyond the clothes they wore, and
beyond the fact that both were attractive. Where Ailleen was fair as a
Saxon, Nellie was dark brown of hair and eyes, slight in build, and
quick in temper.
There was more than a suspicion of the latter in her eyes as she turned
her head at the sound of the approaching horses and saw who was
Ailleen's companion. Her greeting was brief, and she at once mounted her
horse, saying that there was no time to lose now that the others had
managed to arrive. As the four rode off towards Barellan, Ailleen, with
more loyalty than her friend gave her credit for, tried to keep behind
with Bobby; but Dickson was in no way anxious to fall in with the
arrangement, and instead of following Nellie as she cantered ahead, hung
back till the others caught him up.
"Go on with Nellie; what are you dawdling for?" Ailleen called out as
they came up.
"Why can't we all keep together? What's the good of splitting up?"
Dickson answered, as he came alongside Ailleen on the opposite side to
young Murray.
The latter looked over at him with an expression that showed he at least
had a considerable objection to keeping all together. He was only a
youngster of sixteen, but he was one among the many of Ailleen's
admirers, and the price of his accompanying his sister was that he
should have the enjoyment of Ailleen's company all the way to Barellan
and back. There was little sympathy between him and Dickson; but the
absent Tony was his ideal of all that a man should be, so that if there
was any truth in the rumour that Tony and Dickson were rivals, he would
not miss an opportunity of praising the one at the expense of the other,
being satisfied that with Tony already a claimant, he could have no hope
of ever enjoying Ailleen's undivided affections.
"It was the arrangement, anyway. If you don't like it, why did you hurry
out? We didn't ask you," he said.
Nellie, finding herself alone, had turned back and rejoined the others.
"Heavens! are you all going to camp, or what?" she exclaimed. "Don't you
want us to go to the station, Willy? Or perhaps Bobby and I can go back
home--is that it? _We_ don't mind."
"Don't we? Well, we do," Bobby retorted. "It's Dickson who keeps
loafing round. Here, go on," he added, as, turning his horse round, he
hit Dickson's with a switch across the flank.
The horse plunged forward, and by the time its rider had it checked he
was well ahead, with Nellie close at his heels.
"I'm not going to stand much of this, I can tell you," she exclaimed, as
she came beside him. "If you think you're going to play with me as you
like, you're mistaken. You treat me properly or I'll tell your mother
all about----"
"You're always grumbling. I never saw such a girl," he interrupted.
"I'm not grumbling. I suppose you thought you'd trick me, and let
Ailleen think I'd never been on the station before. Well, you see, you
made a mistake. I shall tell her all about it. You know what you said
and promised. If I tell Bobby he'll kill you, see if he won't."
The watery eyes were shifting rapidly from one side to the other, for
there were many things which had occurred between him and Nellie about
which he was by no means anxious Ailleen, least of any one, should know.
But Nellie had a temper, and was somewhat prone to spiteful
retaliations, and, without counting the cost to herself, might say
enough to make the immediate future rather unsettled, if not actually
painful, to him.
"You _are_ jealous," he mumbled. "I never saw such a girl. You think
every other girl can cut you out by looking at me. You don't seem to
think I've got eyes. I couldn't help it if I met her when I hurried to
meet you. Why didn't you say you were going straight to the lagoon? You
always came by the township road before. I didn't know."
It was a tone and a line of argument that had served him well on
previous occasions when Nellie's temper had become ruffled; and if one
dose were not enough, he was prepared to administer a second, and even a
third, so long as his latest chance were not jeopardized by a disclosure
which he knew would be fatal to him.
"I don't believe you," she replied, with an upward glance at him.
He met her glance and smiled, just as he did when Ailleen's switch fell
across his hand. Nellie only looked up at him when she was mollified,
and he was satisfied that the storm was over for the time being. But he
did not attempt to fall back or wait for the others till the slip-rails
leading into the home paddock were reached.
The station homestead was in view from the slip-rails, a long building,
all on a floor, with a roof stretching from the ridge-pole down to the
rones of the verandah, bungalow fashion. It stood some feet above the
ground on a number of tarred and tin-capped piles, a necessary
precaution in the land of the white ant. Some distance away from the
station-house the outbuildings stood--the store, the men's quarters, and
the like--for Barellan was worth having when fully stocked and properly
worked. But now it was languishing for want of an energetic head.
Rumours floated about among the drifting comers and goers who formed
the working staff from time to time; rumours which told of the thriving
condition in which once it had been--when the lady who now reigned over
it in sad and sightless solitude had been in the heyday of her youth and
beauty. But that was nearly thirty years ago, and thirty years back
reaches into the dark mists of the prehistoric age in many parts of
Australia. The tales of that period were necessarily so vague, or
hopelessly contradictory, as various travelling swagsmen tried to
embellish them for the benefit of the listeners in the men's hut, that
scant courtesy was paid to them. More recent stories were evasive enough
as far as substantiation was concerned; all save one, and that was a
gruesome tale--a tale of a fallen tree stretching out long, jagged
branches, sharp at the ends and pointing up a by-track used by the
station hands, years ago, as a short cut to the branding yards. A high
wind had brought that tree down one night, and a new bend had been made
in the track so as to avoid it where it lay with its jagged branches
reaching out like the hungry prongs of a bundle of gigantic
toasting-forks. Years afterwards a stranger, making for the men's hut at
sunset, had passed that way, and, with a ghastly face and quaking limbs,
had dashed into the hut as the men sat at supper, and had told a tale
which was scoffed at, till later, one by one, the men learned to ride
five miles round rather than pass that by-track alone at night.
Another tale there was of a coach stuck up on the old main road beyond
the boundary fence, when the mail was burned, and one of the
passengers, being shot, fell with his head in the fire, and lay there
till the Lady of Barellan, riding down the road in the morning, found
him, and the remainder of the company bound to the trees and gagged. She
had ridden back for help, and had fallen on the verandah of the
station-house as she gave her news, and the men had ridden off to help
those of whom she told, and left her unnoticed, lying where the sun
poured down on her in the full force of summer, scorching the sight out
of her eyes. From that day she had been sightless, and soon after she
was alone, save for the boy she idolized, for her husband had gone to
the north to buy store cattle, and had disappeared from the ken of man,
till a skeleton, with two broken spears through the ribs, and the
remains of a swag and clothes, identified by some friends as Dickson's,
were found in the neighbourhood whither he had intended to journey.
So the station had languished for the want of a guiding hand and head,
while the owner passed her days sitting on the verandah, with her
sightless eyes fixed where a clump of trees grew thickly on the spot
where the coach had been stuck up so many years before. A slim hand-rail
ran from a corner of the verandah to the clump three hundred yards away,
and round the trees a high three-rail fence was built, with a gate where
the hand-rail met it, and no one of the station ever went there save the
Lady of Barellan; for it was a strange fancy, born of the fever that had
followed the loss of her sight, some said, that she had of going there,
feeling her way by the hand-rail, and staying there alone and silent,
musing.
She was sitting on the verandah as the four rode up, with her eyes,
which, save for a fixity of gaze, showed nothing of their affliction,
staring away into the distance where the clump of trees stood out,
purple-blue in their shade above the buff of the sun-dried grass and
against the pure, transparent azure of the sky overhead.
Dickson mounted the steps leading on to the verandah, with Nellie close
upon him and Ailleen further behind; while Bobby, not having outgrown
the uneasiness of youth, remained in the saddle holding the bridles of
the other three horses as well as his own.
"Here's Nellie," Dickson said abruptly, as he reached the chair where
the sightless woman sat.
"How do you do, Nellie?" she said simply, as she held out her hand.
"And this is the other--Ailleen," he added, before Nellie could answer.
Ailleen, looking into the clear, open eyes which looked so steadily into
hers, and were so different from what she had pictured to herself, took
the extended hand.
"I am so glad to be able to see you. Oh, I forgot--I'm so sorry," she
added quickly.
"Dearie, dearie," the blind woman said, in a gentle, caressing tone,
placing her other hand over Ailleen's, "it's very kind of you to say
that, very kind of you. There's many a one said far worse and never
given a thought whether it hurt me or not. Come, sit ye down, dearie,
and tell me all about yourself. Willy, bring a chair."
But Willy, convoyed by Nellie, had passed out of sight and hearing.
"I will sit here," Ailleen exclaimed, as she sat on the top of the steps
leading to the ground from the verandah.
"Ay, ay," the other woman said. "He's no sooner here than he's away.
Tell me, dearie, all about yourself. Never mind him; maybe he's gone to
get some tea or some fruit for you--he's an unselfish boy, a good,
unselfish boy."
Ailleen looked into the open eyes, sightless and expressionless, and
felt a twinge of pity for the lonely heart who spoke so fondly of her
boy--the boy who had spoken of her to Ailleen, and said that she was
ill-tempered, fretful, and worrying. She, guileless herself, had
sympathized with him, never doubting that some truth existed in his
words. Now she had seen the two together, had heard the abrupt manner of
the son to the mother and the almost pleading gentleness of the mother
to the son, and in a trice there had come a dual sense--attraction to
the mother; repulsion from the son.
As she sat talking to her, looking out across the level, sun-scorched
paddocks to the fringe of standing bush, with the purple loom of the
distant ranges showing over the irregular tops of the gums as a bank of
purplish cloud against the blue of the sky, and with the chromatic
whistle of the magpies coming faint but clear through the still
air--just a glimpse of the Australian scenery that grows so dear in its
simplicity and colour--she was more and more attracted to the woman who
had known so much of human suffering, and waited so long and so
patiently in darkness which was more than solitude. The simple story of
her life Ailleen told--saving any reference to the absent Tony--and the
blind woman caught with swift sympathy at the fact that she was
motherless, and might at any moment be fatherless also.
"And you have no relatives--no friends?" she asked gently.
"Oh, heaps of friends, but no relatives," the girl answered.
"And if--supposing you were left alone----"
"Well, I can work," Ailleen added, as the other paused.
"Ay, dearie; but you'd be lonely, and it's bad to be lonely when you're
young."
"Then I'll come and take care of you," the girl answered, as she laughed
lightly.
The woman turned her head quickly and held out her hand, as a smile,
soft and gentle, rippled over her face, and almost overcame the fixed
stare in the sightless eyes.
"You will, dearie? Ay, and you shall. Come to me, dearie, when you are
alone. Make Barellan your home whenever you need one."
As she spoke Dickson and Nellie came round the corner of the verandah.
The shifty eyes of the one twinkled for a moment with a glee which was
not beautiful to see; the dark eyes of the other glittered.
"She never said that to me," Nellie said under her breath. "You'll have
to tell her--or I shall."
"She's only cranky," Dickson answered in the same tone. "She's dotty
half her time and scotty the other."